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The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

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The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

What happens
when Arab autocrats are left to fend for themselves? Turmoil Galore

By James M. Dorsey

(Remarks made at the Asia Pacific Roundtable, APR @ 30:
Cooperation and Contestation in a Changing Regional Landscape)

We have been given the impossible task of telling you in the
words of Hollywood director and actor Woody Allen everything about the Middle
East that you want to know and never dared to ask and all of that in 15
minutes. So what I am going to do is give you a series of headlines so that we
can flesh some of those out in the subsequent discussion. In doing so, I may be
a bit provocative but that will hopefully make debate more lively.

Let me start by saying that the rise of Asia shares
significant responsibility for the turmoil the Middle East is experiencing.
Yes, you heard me correctly. What I mean to say with this is that popular
wisdom has it that a war weary, indecisive and weak President Obama’s
disengagement from the region lies at the root of nations with Saudi Arabia in
the lead adopting more assertive foreign and defensive policies with disastrous
consequences in places like Syria and Yemen and the potential to destabilize
others in the region.

Yes, there is a degree of US disengagement but not out of
weakness but out of strategic reinterpretation of US national interests. That
reinterpretation reduces the importance of the Middle East to the United States
with some exceptions like Israel and attributes significantly increased
significance to Asia. It also involves a realization that support for
autocratic regimes that are fighting for survival irrespective of the cost
constitutes a failed policy, a policy that has fuelled anti-Americanism and
militant interpretations of Islam.

That is particularly true for Saudi Arabia with its
decades-long export of Wahhabism and Salafism that has catapulted a puritan,
inward looking, intolerant interpretation of Islam into an influential force
across the Muslim world. In his interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg of The
Atlantic, Obama noted that the Saudi campaign, the single largest public
diplomacy campaign in history, has begun for example to alter the tolerant
character of Islam in Indonesia witness the predicament of Ahmadis and Shiites
and the conservative turn in public morals that Indonesian society is
experiencing.

Which brings me to my second point, the hostility between
Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is a battle for regional hegemony that has been
going on at least since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. It is a battle
that fuelled the Saudi campaign to export Wahhabism and Salafism in a bid to
counter the revolutionary appeal of Iran and prompted Saudi Arabia to support
Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s eight-year long costly war in the 1980s against Iran.

This is a battle for hegemony that Saudi Arabia lost on day
one and never stood a chance of winning. Saudi Arabia’s predicament was long alleviated
by the fact that hostility towards Iran, think back of the occupation of the US
embassy in Tehran, and subsequent international sanctions kept Iran in check
for much of the last decades. All of that changed with the nuclear agreement
and the lifting of the sanctions.

As a result, Saudi Arabia sees its window of opportunity
closing. It explains why Saudi Arabia’s main objection to the nuclear agreement
was not so much whether or not it would stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons
but the fact that Iran would be returning to the international community less
fettered by sanctions. Saudi policy at whatever cost has since been to attempt
to strengthen Iranian hardliners in the hope that they would complicate Iran’s
return and make it as difficult as possible for Iran to get access to
technology and funding needed for the rehabilitation of its economy. Which is
why Saudi Arabia refused to agree to oil production cuts that would raise oil
prices without Iran being part of the agreement. Iran’s goal is not price
stabilization but the regaining of market share lost as a result of the
sanctions

Fact of the matter is that Saudi Arabia lacks the intrinsic
building blocks to retain its regional leadership status on a level playing
field. It lacks the assets that countries like Iran, Turkey and Egypt have
irrespective of what state of political and economic disrepair they currently
may be experiencing. Those countries have large populations, diversified
industrial bases, battle hardened militaries that at least at times have
performed, histories of empire and geography. Saudi Arabia has Mecca and money,
the latter in lesser amounts given the fall in commodity prices and heightened
expenditure. Turkey, Iran and Egypt figure prominently in China’s vision of One
Belt, One Road, Saudi Arabia does not.

Saudi policy appears to operate on the principle of Marx’s
Verelendungstheorie, it’s got to get worse to get better. And the worse it gets
the more likely it will be that the United States will have to reengage and
delay its pivot to Asia. Even if that is true, it would not be a return to the
status quo ante in which US support for Saudi Arabia was absolute. The nuclear
agreement with Iran has made sure of that. Granted, the outcome of the US
presidential election could rewrite the landscape.

Saudi efforts to avert the inevitable relies on sectarianism
that threatens not only regional but also domestic stability and effects ethnic
and sectarian relations elsewhere in the world and particularly in Asia. That
is not to say that Iran does not nurture and support forces with sectarian
identities in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Nor does this deny the fact that Iran
opposes monarchical rule, it toppled its own monarch, the first pro-American
icon to fall in the region in a popular revolt, and denounces Wahhabism. The
question is how Iranian policy would have evolved in the wake of the Iran-Iraq
war had Saudi Arabia adopted a more conciliatory approach.

All of this takes place at a time that Middle Eastern
autocrats are seeking to reorder the Middle East and North Africa in ways that
will ensure their survival. They are doing so in the wake of the 2011 Arab
popular revolts that changed the paradigm even if the immediate consequence has
been collapse, counterrevolution, and widespread bloodshed; the changing
security architecture in the region as a result of the redefinition of US
national interest; changing economic imperatives, and the fact that the end of
oil is in sight. Most people born in the Gulf today will witness the end of oil
in their life time.

There is a lot of discussion of the demise of the early 20th
century Sykes Picot agreement having sparked the disintegration of states like
Syria and Iraq in the Middle East. I would take issue with that. Middle Eastern
nation states are fragile not because their post-colonial borders are artificial
but because they were governed for so long by regimes that were not inclusive
and did not deliver. Africa, the continent that was perceived to have been
populated by fragile states that would collapse in a domino effect if only one
state broke apart disproves the theory. Biafra, Eritrea and the Western Sahara did
not spark the domino effect.

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman who is driving
policy in the kingdom is a popular figure. He represents a new generation in a
country with a youth bulge. His Vision 2030 constitutes a needed upgrading of
autocracy. Leaving aside economic questions about the vision, Mohammed will not
be able to turn Saudi Arabia into a diversified, 21st century
knowledge economy on the basis of a backward looking interpretation of Islam
that harks back to the 7th century. In addition, Wahhabism is
becoming an international liability given its undeniable association with
jihadist ideology.

Let me conclude by noting two things: Saudi Arabia in the
early 20th century was what the Islamic State is today. If the
Islamic State survives it will become what Saudi Arabia is today. In many ways,
it does not matter whether the Islamic State is destroyed or not. The key to
defeating Islamic State-like groups and ideologies is tackling what makes them
attractive to multiple audiences. Root causes is the latest buzzword but no
government has so far adopted policy changes that truly address those causes.

Second of all, the ruling Al Saud family and the religious
establishment are nearing a restructuring of their relationship as the cost of
adherence to Wahhabism becomes domestically and internationally too costly.
There is no necessarily good result from that process. The key word in
arguments between the Islamic State and the kingdom is deviant. With other
words, we agree on the base but you, the other, are deviating from it.

The restructuring can entail the religious establishment
bending over further to accommodate the regime. That will spark more radical
religious opposition and undermine the credibility of religious leaders. The Al
Saud’s legitimacy and claim to the right to rule is vested in the religious
establishment. Watch this space. The 2011 popular revolts unleashed processes
that are still unfolding and will take years to settle down.

While Asia may only have been a player in the kicking off of
these processes in terms of American policy calculations, it certainly will not
be immune to their fallout.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dresses up his
increasing authoritarianism with nationalist and religious overtones, sparking
battles over the future of the Kemalist state. Those battles, pitting
nationalist and conservative forces against secularists and Kurds, are nowhere
more evident than on Turkish soccer pitches.

A series of incidents in recent months highlighted the mounting
tensions in Turkish society. Controversy rages over what actually happened in
some of the incidents, particularly those in remote locations or that occurred away
from the prying eyes of fans and/or the media,

The underlying political and social battles are nonetheless evident
and beyond dispute irrespective of who did what to whom when. The incidents frequently
occurred in matches between teams who represent very different and frequently
diametrically opposed visions of what the Turkish state and society should be.

Turkish-American
soccer writer John Blasing who often blogs about violence and social and
political tensions in Turkish soccer noted that the incidents involved “violence
with political undertones, based…on religious and ethnic identities” that targeted
Kurds and secularists, groups that traditionally have had disdain for one
another. Kurds strived to achieve greater cultural and political rights;
secularists championed a unitarian Turkish identity and viewed the Kurdish
southeast of the country as backward.

“The current marginalization of both groups within Turkish
society, however, also offers a unique opportunity for them to come together in
ways that were not possible in the past,” Mr.
Blasing said.

The changing nature of perceptions of one another in Turkey
and the contradictory visions of

Turkey’s future were part of the environmental
architecture when Altay SK Izmir played Erzurum Büyükşehir Belidiyese in April
in eastern Turkey. Hailing from the Mediterranean coastal port city of Izmir,
Altay embodies the ideals of progress, modernity and secularism espoused by
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who in 1923 carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the
Ottoman empire.

Erzurum, an ethnic and religious hodgepodge in eastern
Turkey, once described as The Rock by NATO, when it during the Cold War hosted the
alliance’s most south-eastern air base, reflects the backbone of popular
support for Mr. Erdogan: conservative and nationalist rural towns and cities.

Altay
claimed on its website that an unidentified man brandishing a knife had
attacked its players in their locker room during the match’s intermission. The
incident allegedly occurred after Erzurum fans in the stands had denounced
Altay in chants as hailing from infidel Izmir, a predominantly Greek city until
1923 when what Turks euphemistically call a population exchange were forced to
leave.

In response, Yeni
Akit, a local newspaper denounced Altay fans as terrorists who supported
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has been waging a more than three
decades-long insurgency and proudly extolled how Turks from Erzurum had taken
Greek soldiers hostage during the Turkish Greek war in the 1920s.

Also in April, officials of Amed SK which hails from
Diyarbakir, widely viewed as the Turkish Kurds’ capital, assaulted their counterparts
of MKE Ankaragücü, a team that calls Ankara, the Turkish capital home, in an
attack that was caught on video.
Diyarbakir fans allegedly threw stones at MKE players during an earlier match
in the predominantly Kurdish city and whistled as the Turkish anthem was being
played.

Formerly known as Diyarbakır Büyükşehir Belediyespor, the
club in 2014 adopted Amed, the long banned Kurdish name of Diyarbakir, as its identity
and changed its colours to the yellow, red and green of the Kurdish flag.

The move constituted part of Kurdish resistance to long
standing restrictions on the user of their languages and expressions of ethnic
or national identity. Kurds account for between 10 and 23 percent of Turkey’s
population.

Similarly, a controversial call for making Turkey’s secular
constitution Islamic by Ismail Kahraman, the speaker of the Turkish parliament,
reverberated on the soccer pitch. Members of Carsi, the militant support group
of Istanbul’s Besiktas JK that has a huge national following and played a key
role in mass anti-government protests in 2013 chanted “Turkey
is secular and will remain secular” during a match between Kayserispor
and their team. The Carsi chant was also echoed by supporters of Fenerbahce SK,
one of two Besiktas arch rivals.

The battle over secularism erupted in the stadiums as
Turkish police arrested 38 people accused of framing Fenerbahce executives of
match fixing as part of a failed power grab by self-exiled preacher Fethullalh
Gulen. Those arrested included former police chiefs, lawyers and at least one
journalist. They were accused of belonging to a "terror organization"
and conducting illegal wiretaps.

A 2011 match-fixing scandal involving Fenerbahce signalled
the fall-out between erstwhile allies Messrs. Erdogan and Gulen. The scandal
amounted to a struggle for control of Fenerbahce, the political crown jewel of Turkish
soccer, between the two men. Gulen supporters in the judiciary accused senior
members of the then Erdogan government of corruption, leading to a crackdown
and the banning of the group.

In April, fans further challenged Mr. Erdogan’s megalomaniac
sense of glory by clashing with police after they were banned from attending
the opening of Besiktas’ renovated and renamed stadium. In doing so, they
ensured that the opening harked back to the stadium’s closure in the wake of
the 2013 protests that were countered with brutal force.

Those fans that made it into the stadium defied a ban on
chanting political slogans in stadiums by resurrecting the 2013 chants, “C’mon
spray us with tear gas” and “We are Mustafa Kemal’s Soldiers.”

Mr. Erdogan, a purveyor of conspiracy theories in which dark
forces – including Zionists, Germany, Britain, and a mastermind presumed to be
the United States – continuously conspire against Turkey, has inspired the
country’s pro-government media to extend the anti-Turkish plots to fans who
take issue with his policies.

“Chaos Over Football: The Gang of Treachery Wants to
Destabilize Turkey” read a headline in Fotomac in February, a day after a
protester snatched a red card from a referee in the Black Sea town of Trabzon
in protest against what he considered to be biased judgements.

“According to an allegation, there is a secret gang working
behind the scenes of Turkish football. It has been stated that this gang
pressed a button in order to drag the country into chaos by pulling masses to
the streets via football. It has been learned that the secret gang, which had
failed to drag Turkey into chaos during the Gezi Park protests, now has chosen
Trabzonspor as a target, and it provokes the fans of this team by using referee
mistakes as a pretext,” the newspaper reported, referring to Trabzon’s major
soccer club.

Friday, May 27, 2016

(Lecture at MEI Conference: The Middle East Peace Process
After the Arab Uprisings)

When Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, returned to
Jerusalem earlier this month, he was asked by colleagues what story he would be
covering. The story seemed evident to Jeremy. It was of course the ongoing
violence perpetrated by individual Palestinians against Israelis and the hard
handed response by Israeli security forces. To his colleagues, that story had
lost its news value, it was something that had already been going on for some
eight months and had become part of the fabric of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

That may indeed be true and yet it is that very fabric that
is becoming toxic on more than one level and that is changing in the wake of
the popular Arab revolts of five years ago. For sure, the violence reflects the
hardening of Israeli and Palestinian sentiments against one another. It is a
hardening that takes place among reduced, if not the absence, of contact with
one another given travel restrictions on Palestinians going to Israel and
Israelis who would want to visit the West Bank outside of the Jewish settlements.
Yet, the violence has more than at any other time since the wave of suicide
bombings in the early 2000sspread fear among
Israeli Jews who no longer feel safe when they take public transportation, are
increasingly suspicious of people they see on the street, and avoid areas in
Jerusalem or around Umm el Fahm in the Galilee that they no longer feel are
secure.

It is a fabric in which significant segments of Israeli and
Palestinian society no longer see peace as a realistic option. For
Palestinians, the response is resistance that can consist of individual acts
rather than an organized struggle. For Israeli Jews, it is the long proven
false belief that hard-handed responses to violent acts and repression will
keep Palestinian anger and frustration in check. It’s also for Israelis, an
increasingly blatant and racist attitude among a majority that believes that
only the Israeli right led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can ensure
Israel’s security.

The degree to which racism pervades Israeli society was
evident in a recent report presented to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that
concluded that three quarters of youth in Israel, Jewish and Palestinian, had
experienced discrimination at the hands of the police or in the classroom on
the basis of their origin or physical appearance. Eighty percent of those
surveyed often turned to alcohol for solace. Ironically, opposition to an
Israeli right whose attitudes towards Palestinians threaten to spin out of
control is strongest among the Israeli military’s senior officer corps.

Maysam Abu Alqian, an aspiring psychology student who works
at a supermarket opposite the Tel Aviv municipality to earn money for his
education, was assaulted this month by three border guards as he was throwing
out trash. The guards kicked him in the face and body, forcing him to seek
medical help at a hospital. Had someone not filmed the incident on his
smartphone, it would never have become public. Tag Meier Forum, an umbrella for
some 50 groups that fight racism in Israel, asserts that verbal attacks and physical
abuse against Palestinians are becoming common.

Tag Meier chairman Gadi Gvaryahu says his group has documented
30 cases in which men who spoke Arabic in public had been attacked and had
sustained injuries ranging from slight to life-long disability. The Forum says
only 20 percent of reported hate crimes make it to court. The group recorded
1,562 reports of such crimes committed by Israeli Jews between 2013 and 2015 of
which only 287 resulted in indictments. The majority of cases were closed due to
“lack of public interest” or because the perpetrators were not found.

Netanyahu appeared to reinforce tolerance of racism when he
this month appointed ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman as his defence minister.
Recently, Lieberman publicly praised Sgt. Elor Azaria, an Israeli soldier for fatally
shooting a wounded Palestinian assailant in the head as he was lying on the
ground awaiting medical attention and subsequently attended Azaria’s trial in a
gesture of solidarity. Azaria, a medic, was caught on video shooting a Palestinian
who together with another Palestinian had lightly wounded an Israeli soldier in
a knife attack.

Racist supporters of notorious soccer club Beitar Jerusalem,
the bad boy of Israeli football and the only club that refuses to hire
Palestinian players, this month verbally assaulted Nadwa Jaber, a Palestinian teacher
at a bilingual school in the mixed Israeli Jewish-Israeli Palestinian community
of Neve Shalom. Writing on Facebook. Rotem Yadlin, a mother of one of Jaber’s
Jewish students wrote: “Nadwa educates kids to a life of equality and
fraternity, co-existence, peace, faith in mankind. You may be real heroes who
know how to spit at a six-year-old girl. We, on the other hand, will keep
dreaming together and making this country a better place — for the sake of
Amit, (Yadlin’s daughter], Jaber’s daughter, (6-year-old Intissar), for
ourselves, for Nadwa.”

Neve Shalom, an effort to prove that Israeli Jews and
Palestinians can live together, is the exception.

By and large, fear of one
another coupled with the erosion of hope for an equitable solution and the fall
out of the Arab revolts is rupturing the fabric of society, Israeli Jewish
society, Israeli Palestinian society and Palestinian society on the West Bank.
Palestinians irrespective of whether they carry Israeli passports or live under
occupation have no expectations from an Israeli government and society they see
as racist. Similarly, Israelis doubt the Palestine Authority’s sincerity in
seeking peace and believe that Palestinians whether with Israeli passports or
without simply hate Jews. Youth on both sides of the divide share the
experience of the second intifada, the disappointment of the Oslo peace process,
and the subsequent expansion of Israeli settlements and security barriers. Many
endorse a two-state solution but don’t believe it is a realistic one.

It is a stalemate constructed on mirror images of one
another that is sparking changing attitudes among Israeli Jewish, Israeli
Palestinian and Palestinian youth. It is also a reflection of a paradigm shift
as a result of the popular revolts and of a global phenomenon in which many
have lost confidence in whatever system they live under and whoever leads them.
A picture published at the beginning of the most recent cycle of violence
highlighted the paradigm shift. It showed a girl in jeans and a kaffiyeh
passing rocks to a masked boy sporting a Hamas headband.

What I want to do today is focus on Palestinian youth for
whom the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a constant in their lives but who are
equally and more immediately concerned with social and economic issues that affect
their daily lives. In doing so, the long-term effects of the popular Arab revolts
are evident in their willingness to openly and publicly confront their parents,
elders, communal and other leaders. Like swaths of youth across the globe, they
believe that political systems and leaders have marginalized and failed them.

Abed Abu Shehade is a 22-year old student and activist from
Jaffa for the Balad Party, one of three Israeli Palestinian parties that formed
a common list to make it into the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. As far as
Abed and his friends are concerned, getting the party into parliament is
proving to have been a wasted effort. The party has no impact on Israeli policy
and like much of the Palestinian establishment is unwilling to acknowledge
social changes that are occurring in Palestinian society as a result of a youth
that feels it has either no or only limited social and economic prospects, is
viewed with prejudice not only by Israeli Jews but also by Palestinians, and
whose social mores are changing. His is a generation of Palestinians that wears
distressed denim, is active on social media, listens to Western music, and
watches Hollywood movies. None of this says anything about their religiosity.

If Israeli Jews fear Palestinian youth when they see them on
a street, uncertain whether they may wield a knife against them, Palestinians
are not sure whether youth they encounter on the street are common criminals or
not. Crime as a result of lack of opportunity and un- or under employment among
Palestinian youths is but one major concern that Palestinian society is unwilling
to openly discuss.

If Palestinian youth expect to be humiliated by Israeli
Jews, it’s the humiliation by their own that really hits home. Standing with a friend
in line at kiosk in Jaffa several years ago, Abed noted in front of them a
middle-aged Palestinian woman, a local politician, clutch her hand bag, afraid
that they intended to rob her. “I never felt so humiliated in my life,” Abed
said. Had they been initially willing to do anything the woman might have asked
of them, Abed and his friends’ response to her assumption that they were common
thieves was to intimidate her even more.

Abed and his friend’s response is reflective of a
Palestinian youth that not only feels it has no prospects but also that the
issues that concern it most are hushed up. Stigmatization by both Israelis and
Palestinians and fear of the police and criminal gangs is but one of the
problems. Palestinian youths are being pulled in multiple directions, the
religious charge they are not religious enough while secularists charge they
are too religious. Their concerns unrecognized, political apathy reigns as a
result of which Palestinian youth in Israel and the West Bank often stand
accused of not being engaged. They feel damned if they do and damned if they
don’t.

Israeli Palestinian youth hold a racist Israeli society
responsible for their plight but feel a Palestinian society that refuses to
acknowledge their plight is equally guilty. Abed recalls a childhood friend being
released from prison. A social worker came to visit and advised him how to best
reintegrate into society. The friend described to her dropping out of school to
help his family make ends meet. His brother forced him to sell drugs while his
mother helplessly watched her sons go off on a wrong track. That’s when I
needed help, he told the social worker: ‘Where were you then?’ A few weeks,
later the activist found his friend’s body on a street riddled with bullets.

Crime, say youth activists is one of the foremost issues,
certainly among Israeli Palestinian youth. Drugs is another. So is the fact
that pre-marital relationships have become more common, yet cannot be openly
discussed. In what seems anti-cyclical, the picture of a Middle East turning
more conservative is not immediately evident on the streets of Israeli
Palestinian towns like Sakhnin, Arrabe or Deir Hassan in the Galilee, where
uncovered, fashionable dressed youth, male and female, is as common as ones who
uphold more conservative dress codes.

Social attitudes also appear to be changing on the West
Bank. Five years ago members of the Palestinian national women’s soccer team
described battles within their families about their right to play. At times
their matches, had to be played in empty stadia and guarded by police to
protect them from attack by conservative religious forces. Today, the player’s
team speak about their family’s support and that they are proud of the fact
that they represent Palestine and project it favourably internationally. Stadia
host a growing number of fans whenever they play.

Ironically, Palestinian Authority-governed territory, and
particularly Ramallah, is attracting Israeli Palestinian youth who feel they
have a greater opportunity to be themselves in an urban environment as opposed
to the smaller towns they hail from in Israel. Ramallah is however no solution
for a problem that threatens to further fracture the fabric of Israeli society,
both Jewish and Palestinian.

Similarly, Israeli Palestinian soccer players who play key
roles in Israeli clubs increasingly opt to play for West Bank teams and the
Palestinian national team rather than its Israeli counterpart. The Shebab
Hebron football club recently won for the first time in 30 years the West
Bank’s championship, thanks to five new players, all Israeli Palestinians. Six
Israeli Palestinians currently play for Palestine instead of Israel. In Palestine
they don’t encounter the kind of racism that often greets them in Israeli
stadiums.

“Professionalism in Israel is better. But it is developing
here and I’m sure that in a few years it will be completely professional,” said
Abu Obeideh Rabie, one of the players who moved to Hebron. The moves have not
been without problems. Palestinian club Al-Dharia was recently sanctioned after
several of the club’s players were barred entry into Lebanon because they
carried Israeli identity documents. Israeli citizens are barred from travelling
to Lebanon.

Influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who is
widely viewed as sympathetic to Israel, warned in a recent column that Israel’s
travails were in part due to its “desire to destroy itself.” Friedman suggested
that Netanyahu would soon become the prime minister of the State of
Israel-Palestine as a result of his refusal to come to peace terms with the
Palestinians. The implication was that demographics against the backdrop of
continued control of West Bank Palestinians would force Israel, if it wants to
retain its Jewish character, to continue discriminating Palestinians and would
risk becoming the equivalent of an apartheid state.

All of this, points to a powder keg. Israel’s national
intelligence estimate warned this year that violence would escalate in the absence
of a credible pace process. Social and economic issues are not always what
persuades West Bank Palestinians to randomly stab an Israeli. It often is a
sense of, humiliation as well as lack of security and freedom as a result of
occupation, societal attitudes, and failed political leadership that prompts
reasonably successful men and women to attempt to take someone else’s life and
waste their own.

Fact of the matter is, no one knows if the powder keg will
erupt, and if so, how it will erupt. Escalation of the violence of the past
eight months is one possibility. Mass protests as occurred last year as the
violence initially erupted is another. There is little doubt that in theory the
building blocks for a popular uprising in Palestinian lands are in place.

Palestinian protests are frequently directed as much against
the Israelis as they are against the Palestinian leadership. Protests like the
second intifada are often preceded by calls for reform that went unheeded. Palestinian
youth and civic society groups have made through numerous initiatives and
protests clear that they want a say in determining their future, one that puts
an end to Israeli occupation and domination and that accords them greater
freedom in their own society. Their demands for an end to the occupation, the
lifting of the yoke of the Israeli security forces, reform of the PLO, national
unity, social justice, and an end to corruption are similar to what fuelled the
Arab revolts. Yet, like in many cases in the Middle East and elsewhere it
remains impossible to predict if and under what circumstances a revolt may
occur.

The stabbings have in common with the popular Arab revolts
that they emanate from an amorphous, leaderless whole. They fit the pattern of
the unusual suspects who drove the Arab revolts. Yet unlike the revolts they
remain the spontaneous acts of individuals and at least until now have not
jelled into something organized.

The stabbings tell us that discontent is boiling at the
surface. These uncoordinated violent outbursts of anger are one form of
resistance alongside the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement
and local peaceful protest. They are also an expression of frustration with the
lack of impact of attempts by the Palestinian Authority to pursue Palestinian
rights through the United Nations. The fact that the Palestine Football
Association (PFA) last year had to withdraw its proposed resolution for the
suspension of Israel from FIFA despite wide support highlighted the PA’s
failure.

More than half of youth in the West Bank and Gaza have not
registered to vote and have no intention of doing so, according to a recent
survey. The stabbings also reflect a widespread refusal by youth to participate
in protests organized by either Fatah or Hamas. That was evident in the wave of
protests that erupted in the fall of last year even if few seem to believe that
protests will actually effect change in Israeli or Palestinian policies.

Much like in the first intifada, the Palestinian leadership
at best pays lip service to expressing an understanding of what is driving
protest and the youth. It seems singularly unwilling to draw political
conclusions from that in an environment in which the history of the resistance,
the failure of the peace process and dominance of autocracy in the region has
undermined institutions and strengthened self-serving political parties. What
were once resistance groups have become bureaucracies bent on ensuring their
own survival.

What the stabbings do tell us is that the fabric of Israeli
and Palestinian society is being eroded by a conflict to which a solution seems
ever more distant, if not impossible, and by societies and leaderships
incapable and unwilling to listen to a Palestinian youth whose prospects are
dim at best and whose anger is directed as much at Israeli racism as it is
against Palestinian indifference, prejudice and refusal to acknowledge changing
realities.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

From the influence of supporters in Egypt to a folk-song singing keeper in Syria and clandestine clubs formed by Saudi women, the journalist and scholar examines the considerable role of soccer in culture and politics in the most volatile region on the planet.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Award winning journalist tells UCFB Wembley students of close relationship between football and politics in the Middle East

It’s hard to think of anywhere in the world with a faster growing professional sport economy than the Middle East.

Golf’s European Tour Race to Dubai has its showpiece season ender in the Gulf state, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is now firmly placed as the jewel in the crown of the Formula One season and, of course, Qatar is gearing up to host the controversial FIFA World Cup in 2022.

Then there’s the influx of Middle Eastern investors in European football clubs. Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Malaga have all been transformed in recent seasons with billions of pounds being invested into playing squads, stadium infrastructure and worldwide marketing.

Students at the iconic UCFB Wembley campus were given the unique opportunity to quiz James M. Dorsey, a man who knows more than most how sport is used as a political tool in the Middle East. The award winning journalist and author visited UCFB as part of the Executive Guest Speaker Series, a weekly event where students get the chance to hear from and ask questions of those in the football, sport and events industries.

James’ talk came on the back of his recently published book, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, the same name as his critically acclaimed blog.

In the book, like his blog, James describes the relationship between football and politics in the region and North Africa.

Following his lecture, James sat down with UCFB to talk about how the two are so closely linked. He said: “They’re inextricable, incestuous if you wish. Siamese twins joined at the hip. Politics is built into the DNA of football in the region and everything that has to do with football is affected by politics.”

James said that Qatar deny any wrongdoing over the bidding to host the World Cup in 2022 and that hosting the event was about “soft power”, much like other major Middle East events such as the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

He said: “Qatar is a small country with 300,00 citizens sandwiched between major countries that are potential threats – Iran and Saudi Arabia. No matter what it invests in the military, both in terms of hiring people from the outside or in military equipment, it will never be able to defend itself. So what it needs to do is ensure that in a time of emergency the international community will be willing to come to its help. One way of doing that is by embedding itself with a popular, or good, perception in the international community. What better way than football.”

James went on to say that the success of title-winning Leicester City’s Riyad Mahrez becoming the first Muslim to win the coveted PFA Player of the Year award is something the whole region has taken a huge amount of pride in.

He said: “Football evokes very deep-seated passions across the region. It is the most popular sport by far and plays a very important role in people’s lives. So if one of them succeeds, the region succeeds. And that’s happening at a time in which the region is in turmoil and there’s a lot of prejudice against both Arabs and Muslims. So to be able to project yourself in a very different way on one of the most popular platforms is something that everybody in the region is going to embrace.”

Friday, May 20, 2016

Two recent incidents involving the refusal of Arab teams to
play their Palestinian counterparts on Palestinian soil highlight the Asian
Football Confederation’s (AFC) willingness to play politics at the
Palestinians’ expense at times with the connivance of the Palestine Authority
headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

The incidents further spotlight the consequences of the
incestuous relationship between sports and politics that is nowhere more
pervasive than in the Middle East. The AFC like other international sports
associations propagates the fiction that the two are separate even if the
politics that underlie its recent decisions and those of the Palestine
Authority at times appear to contradict one another.

In the latest incident, the AFC handed a victory to the
regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad by endorsing the refusal of two
Syrian clubs, Al Jaish, the soccer team owned by the Syrian military, and Al
Wahda, to play their Palestinian counterparts in Palestine because it would
involve crossing an Israeli border post. Israel controls the Palestine
Authority’s West Bank borders.

Clubs from other Arab countries that do not have diplomatic
relations with Israel, including Iraq, Oman, and Bahrain, have had no problem
with passing through an Israeli border post to play their AFC Cup matches in
Palestine.

The Syrian refusal followed an earlier Syrian advisory that
its home matches would have to be played on neutral ground because of the
brutal civil war in Syria. The Assad regime has used the participation in
regional and international competitions of its national soccer team and clubs
from areas of Syria that it controls to project a notion of normalcy and
government control despite the carnage wracking the country.

The AFC’s endorsement of the Syrian position meant that Palestinian
clubs Al Dahria and Ahli AlKhalil had to secure a neutral venue for their AFC Cup home matches even though it was a Syrian refusal that was putting the games
in jeopardy.

AlKhalil was ordered by the AFC to find a neutral host
country for its match against Al Jaish, sign a financial agreement, and secure
visas for the Syrian club within a matter of days, according to the PFA. The AFC denied that clubs were obliged to sign financial arrangements. The AFC awarded the match to
Al Jaish and penalized AlKhalil with three penalty points when the Palestinian
club failed to secure a neutral venue on time.

The penalizing of Dahria for its failure to play Al Wahda
seems even more egregious. In contrast to AlKhalil, Dahria finalized
arrangements for its match to be played in Lebanon. Seven Dahria players and
the team’s fitness coach were detained on arrival at Beirut airport and
deported because they were carrying both Palestinian and Israeli travel
documents even though they were entering Lebanon on their Palestinian passports
only.

The AFC justified penalizing Dahria by saying that "Al Dharia was the home club for the match on 11 May and their failure to provide a stadium was what saw them forfeited."

The Palestinian clubs were penalized despite the fact that
the Palestinian Ministry of Civil Affairs certified in response to an AFC
request that nothing prohibited Syrians from entering Palestine, according to a
chronology of events presented to by the PFA to the AFC.

“One word describes it all: unfair,” said Susan Shalabi
Molano, head of the Palestine Football Association’s international relations
committee and a member of the AFC’s executive committee.

In a similar endorsement of political interference in
soccer, the AFC failed to intervene when Mr. Abbas’ Authority bowed to Saudi
pressure, including a phone call to the Palestinian president by Saudi King
Salman, to move an earlier match between Saudi Arabia and Palestine to a
neutral venue.

Mr. Abbas, supported by an official of world soccer body
FIFA dispatched to Palestine to inspect the situation, spared the kingdom being
penalized for its refusal to play in Palestine by certifying despite objections
from the PFA that Palestine could not guarantee the security of the Palestinian
players.

It was unclear why security was not an issue in the case of
Oman, Bahrain and Iraq. The AFC and FIFA’s reluctance to intervene in and
effectively condone what was blatant political interference by King Salman and
Mr. Abbas is all the more remarkable given Saudi Arabia’s willingness to
cooperate with Israel in confronting Iran and to allow senior members of its
ruling family and retired military officers to meet publicly with Israeli
officials and former officers.

The AFC’s penalizing of the Palestinian clubs and its
handling of the Saudi affair seems in line with its recent suggestion that
national soccer associations should not be penalized for political interference
by governments because that is beyond their control and harmed clubs and
grassroots football. FIFA recently lifted a ban on Indonesia while maintaining
the barring of Kuwait on charges of government interference.

“Our Member Associations (MAs) are being punished for
actions which are outside their control. It is not that the members have broken
the rules but they are suspended because of the decisions taken by their
governments. It is extremely damaging for the members, who are not only banned
from playing international football but also lose their grassroots funding.
Development is being hugely affected in these MAs through lost income from
their sponsors, as well as funding from the AFC and FIFA. This, in turn, leads
to staff losses and cancelled projects,” said Mariano V. Araneta Jr, chairman
of an AFC taskforce that looked at intrusions in the running of national soccer
associations.

The AFC’s presumption that national soccer associations are
victims rather than accessories, if not participants in political interference,
is belied by the fact that most Middle Eastern and North African governing
bodies are managed by members of ruling families or executives with close ties
to government.

The implicit call in the taskforce’s conclusion would
effectively give those executives a blank check and deprive bodies like FIFA
and AFC from much of the leverage they have. It would in effect legitimize the
politics surrounding the Saudi and Palestinian cases. In the case of Saudi
Arabia, the AFC’s suggestion effectively goes further, allowing the Palestinian
government to impose its will on the Palestinian soccer association.

Playing politics means that the AFC and FIFA apply their
rules selectively as is obvious in the case of both the Palestinian clubs and
the Saudis. Both cases spotlight the need for international sports associations
to drop the fiction of a separation of sports and politics, acknowledge the
inextricable relationship between the two, and introduce a mechanism that
transparently governs their inseparable bond.

Turkey and Egypt:The Battle to Control Dissent Pitches Fans against Autocrats

Battles for control of stadiums and other public spaces in Turkey and Egypt have pitched militant soccer fans against authoritarian leaders determined to limit the supporters’ ability to challenge their authority.

As a result, a struggle that comes on the back of years of confrontation in the stadiums and mass, watershed anti-government protests that in 2011 toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and in 2013 rocked Turkey and reinforced President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic instincts, has moved beyond stadiums.

In Egypt, general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi inaugurated a new office of the Interior Ministry at the Police Academy in New Cairo, east of the Egyptian capital, as part of the relocation of the ministry away from Cairo’s downtown area where it has long been a target of protests. The police academy joined the prosecutor-general, state security, and judicial bodies in an effort to deprive protesters of symbols at a time of mounting discontent.

“The security situation is connected to the targeting of these institutions by a number of protesters centred in downtown Cairo. They seek to spread chaos throughout the country, especially after the demonstrations became unfortunately chaotic themselves. And they’re attempting to break the aura of authority around state institutions by putting them under siege, covering their walls with graffiti of vulgar images and language degrading to those who work there… The security challenges the country is going through have forced the ministry to accelerate its construction plans,” General Ahmad al-Badry, the former head of the Police Academy, told Al Monitor during the inauguration.

General Badry’s acknowledgement of the street power of the fans followed an unprecedented bid in February by Sisi, who heads one of the most repressive governments in recent Egyptian history, to reach out to his opponents.

In his government’s initial recognition of the power of the fans, Sisi phoned in to a television programme on the fourth anniversary of a politically loaded brawl at a stadium in the Suez Canal city of Port Said in which 72 militant supporters of storied Cairo club Al Ahli SC were killed, to invite them to appoint ten of their members to independently investigate the incident.

It was the first time Sisi reached out to his opponents, many of whom have been killed by the interior ministry’s security forces, forced underground or into exile, or are lingering in prisons where they risk abuse and torture.

Ultras Ahlawy, the militant fan group that played a key role in the 2011 toppling of Mubarak and many of the anti-government protests since, declined the invitation saying it could not be accuser and judge at the same time but kept the door to a dialogue open.

Politicians use the Side Door

Despite stadiums in Egypt being closed to the public for much of the last five years and Sisi’s initial gesture having failed to co-opt the fans, his effort contrasted starkly with Erdoğan’s haughty refusal to even go through the motions of engagement with a social force that has significant street power and has demonstrated its ability to wield it.

The contrasting approaches of Messrs Sisi and Erdoğan, who are at odds over the Egyptian’s military 2013 coup that removed from office Mohammed Morsi, the country’s first and only democratically elected president, and the brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, follow failed attempts in both countries to use the courts to ban militant fan groups as terrorist organizations.

While Sisi has opted to keep stadiums closed to the public in his bid to control public space and prevent sports arenas from become key venues of protest, Erdoğan, a former semi-professional player, has sought full control by banning political slogans and chants during matches, with limited success, and introducing an electronic system widely viewed as an attempt to identify dissident fans. The system sparked a massive boycott and drop in stadium attendance. Erdoğan has further tried to counter the fans by creating pro-government soccer support groups.

Erdoğan’s failure to force the fans into line contrasts with his success in largely muzzling Turkey’s press and curtailing academic and other freedoms of expression.

Last month Erdoğan’s attempt to load the opening of legendary Istanbul soccer club Beşiktaş JK’s renovated Vodafone Arena stadium with pro-government political symbolism, intended to cater to the president’s megalomaniac sense of glory, was interrupted by fans who clashed with police after they were banned from attending the ceremony.

The Beşiktaş opening resembled the stadium’s closure in 2013, when it was still called Inönü Stadium. Though officially shut for renovations, the event was nevertheless politicised: Çarşı –the name of Beşiktaş’s anti-authoritarian fan network – played a key role in the anti-government Gezi Park protests that year.

This year, Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of Beşiktaş fans gathered as their team played its first match in the new stadium. Those fans that made it into the stadium defied the ban on chanting political slogans by resurrecting the Gezi Park chants, “C’mon spray us with tear gas” and “We are Mustafa Kemal’s Soldiers,” a reference to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire and is the father of militant Turkish secularism.

A Battle on and off the Field

Erdoğan’s efforts to manipulate soccer to his benefit has been aided by nationalist sentiment fuelled by the cancellation of international and domestic sporting events in the wake of a spate of jihadist and Kurdish-separatist attacks in major Turkish cities.

The attacks persuaded the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) to move the European Olympic Singles Qualification Tournament out of Turkey and has prompted some major Turkish soccer tournaments and matches to be postponed. The attacks also prompted Lukas Podolski, the German star striker of another major Turkish club, Galatasary SK, to announce that he would be leaving Turkey.

As a result, Erdoğan, a purveyor of conspiracy theories in which dark forces – including Zionists, Germany, Britain, and a mastermind presumed to be the United States – continuously conspire against Turkey, has inspired the country’s pro-government media to extend the plot to soccer.

“Chaos Over Football: The Gang of Treachery Wants to Destabilize Turkey” read a headline in Fotomac in February, a day after a protester snatched a red card from a referee in the Black Sea town of Trabzon in protest against what he considered to be biased judgements.

“According to an allegation, there is a secret gang working behind the scenes of Turkish football. It has been stated that this gang pressed a button in order to drag the country into chaos by pulling masses to the streets via football. It has been learned that the secret gang, which had failed to drag Turkey into chaos during the Gezi Park protests, now has chosen Trabzonspor as a target, and it provokes the fans of this team by using referee mistakes as a pretext,” the newspaper reported, referring to Trabzon’s major soccer club.

Fans remain Resolute

Despite significant differences in the political environment in Egypt and Turkey, fans in both countries fail to be intimidated and exploit every opportunity to make their demands heard, particularly as they relate to access to and control of stadiums.

Fans in Egypt set the stage for intermittent but growing anti-government protests last month when they forced their way into a stadium in protest against the ban on supporters attending football matches.

At the Borg Al Arab stadium in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Ultras Ahlawy stormed the pitch during an African Championship match, the first major soccer-related incident since 20 fans were killed in Cairo last year in a clash with security forces. Police fired gas during the Alexandria incident, wounding 29 people.

The incident occurred amid growing criticism of Sisi and protests against his handing over to Saudi Arabia of two islands in the Red Sea earlier this month during a visit to Cairo earlier this month by Saudi King Salman. The protesters, although far smaller in number than those that toppled Mubarak, adapted the slogans of the 2011 popular revolt: calls of “Bread, freedom – the islands are Egyptian!” replaced the 2011 revolt’s “Bread, freedom and justice.”

The incident and mounting spontaneous protests in neighbourhoods against security force brutality have persuaded Sisi to keep the country’s stadiums closed to the public out of fear that they could become opposition rallying points.

The continued closure of the stadiums like Erdoğan’s flailing attempts to exert political control of soccer and its public space bears the potential of continued confrontation because it incentivizes fans to play their part in broader protests against the government on issues they empathize with.

“As the smell of pepper gas reaches inside, fans chant the legendary slogan: Take off your helmets, drop your batons,” tweeted a Beşiktaş Çarşı fan after last month’s clash with police around the opening of the new stadium. His was a sarcastic invitation by the fans to take on the police on a level playing field.

It’s a challenge security forces in Turkey and Egypt won’t embrace. Overwhelming force and brutality has however proven ineffective in government efforts to suppress them and their refusal to simply surrender control of public space.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog. He has also just published book with the same title.

James M. Dorsey

Dorsey, James M., “Turkey and Egypt: The Battle to Control Dissent Pitches Fans against Autocrats”, Independent Turkey, 15 May 2016, London: Centre for Policy and Research on Turkey (Research Turkey). Original link: http://researchturkey.org/?p=11713

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile